little journey health

Little Journey helps children prepare for hospital procedures and clinical trials. Check out the 12-slide deck it used to raise $3.1 million.

• London-based Little Journey has raised $3.1 million for its children's health platform. 
• The startup helps children and families prepare for hospital procedures and clinical trials.
• Check out the 12-slide deck Little Journey used to raise the fresh funds.

A startup that has developed a platform to support children and their families during hospital procedures and clinical trials has just raised $3.1 million.

London-based Little Journey aims to support all children in the personalized delivery of care, according to cofounder and CEO Dr Chris Evans, who is also an anesthetist. Evans often witnessed how distressed and uncertain children were when they came in for surgery.

This uncertainty can lead to anxiety "which leads to worse health outcomes for children," he added.

"We were giving out adult leaflets to children. I had seen my nieces and nephews interact with technology — and I thought, why can't we do the same for children coming into hospital?" he told Insider.

Little Journey has developed an app that makes children aware of who they're meeting and where they're going and also incorporates animated characters that explain what happens during surgeries and clinical trials. 

Little Journey makes children aware of who they're meeting and where they're going and gives them coping strategies before their clinical procedures. It provides children with coping methods to relax as well as guidelines on how they can keep track of their medication. 

The startup has also developed a platform for management staff at hospitals and clinical trials. Healthcare staff can personalize a patient's pathway on the app, and the platform is currently deployed across over 50 National Health Insurance (NHS) trusts. 

The cofounders decided to tackle pediatric clinical trials because a key issue is a shortfall in recruitment, with many children dropping out — often due to the emotional pressures involved in being a part of a trial . 

Families and carers of children are also regularly kept in the loop, and provided checklists and guidelines to help support patients. The startup claims its platform has reduced anxiety in children by 32%, recovery time by 30%, and, same-day cancellations by 42%.

Amid a drought in the UK's health tech funding landscape since 2022, with pediatric care being an especially neglected sub-sector, Evans found that expanding Little Journey's client base beyond a single market to pharma companies helped cinch the funding. 

"We know in the NHS, there's not a lot of money for patient experience, so there's challenges getting in there," he said. "By working with pharma, keeping a patient in a trial to enable that data collection is of much higher value." 

As a B2B product, the startup licenses its platform to healthcare organizations; its end play is to use that data for personalized care and move that data for use within the life sciences sector. 

The $3.1 million round was led by Octopus Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm that has backed the likes of Cazoo, Depop, and Elvie. 

With the fresh funding, the startup will look at how the data collected from these procedures and trials can drive better-personalized care, based on children's behaviors and needs. 

Check out the 12-slide deck used to raise the funding:

• Main content

Little Journey

Little Journey is a health behaviour modification tool designed to reduce children’s anxiety before a healthcare procedure by using a smartphone app that provides age-tailored immersive and interactive content.

Hospital-based care Mental health

The challenge

Pre-operative anxiety is common, affecting 50-75% of children, and is the leading complaint in adults before surgery. This anxiety is associated with worse physical and mental outcomes, as well as adverse financial implications for healthcare organisations and society as a whole. Fifty percent of children develop negative post-hospital behavioural changes such as bed wetting, separation anxiety and nightmares at two-weeks after an operation, which are ongoing in 8% at one year.

Research has shown that psychological preparation reduces anxiety but is time consuming and costly to perform. Currently patients are supported through single face-to-face pre procedure interactions and/or paper information leaflets.

The solution

Little Journey is a health behaviour modification tool designed specifically to support children and their family network through a potential stressful and anxiety provoking healthcare procedure. It uses varying active behaviour modification mechanisms tailored to the end user to support them through their treatment. From familiarisation through interactive games, desensitisation using virtual reality tours to coping skills education via child narrated animations, Little Journey engages and empowers families in their care.

Little Journey can prepare and support both children and adults during any healthcare interaction, whether a single blood test or a complex research trial protocol. Through medication adherence and research support tools – as well standard preparation and support for a clinical procedure – Little Journey promotes trial recruitment, reduces early withdrawal and supports adherence to the medication under investigation. Overall, by nurturing positive health behaviours, Little Journey reduces anxiety and distress while engaging families in their care.

The app helped as he was very relaxed. It helped seeing where he would sleep. We could have a look before the day and we felt ready. It helped reduce the stress of coming to hospital as we were unsure how to prepare our son for what was going to happen and it helped encourage him to talk about it . Parents of Freddie (aged 5), service user

• 30% reduction in pre-operative anxiety levels of children with autism and ADHD*
• 97% user satisfaction rate
• Accessed by 71% of patients before surgery**
• 42% reduction in on the day cancellations before surgery**
• £3.50 cost benefit to healthcare organisations and £6.00 to society for every £1 spent on Little Journey**

*Quality improvement project performed in Royal Belfast Children’s Hospital.

**Identified by independent health economic analysis performed in 2019, supported by Eastern ASHN & performed by Kent, Surrey, Sussex AHSN.

Olivia Munn documented cancer journey for son to show him 'I tried my best' if she 'didn't make it'

Olivia Munn shared the heart-wrenching reason behind why she decided to document her cancer journey.

In 2022, the 43-year-old actress was diagnosed with Luminal B cancer, "an aggressive, fast moving cancer," in both breasts. After privately battling the disease, she announced her breast cancer diagnosis and revealed that she underwent a double mastectomy in a March Instagram post.

During a Thursday interview with "Good Morning America," Munn recalled that her first thought was of her son Malcolm, 2, when she received her diagnosis.

"Cancer is the — that’s the word you don't want to hear," she told host Michael Strahan. "There’s a lot of other things that you feel like you can beat, but you know cancer takes down a lot of people. And I just thought about my baby."

"The Newsroom" star shares Malcolm with her partner John Mulaney, 41.

OLIVIA MUNN DISGUISES 'BATTLE WOUNDS' FROM DOUBLE MASTECTOMY: 'MAKES ME A LITTLE SAD'

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When asked why she "wanted to document" her journey, Munn explained that it was for Malcolm.

"Well because if I didn’t make it, I wanted my son when he got older to know that I fought to be here," she said. 

"That I tried my best," Munn added. "You want the people in your life, you want the people that maybe don't understand what's going on right to know that you did everything you could to be here."

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As part of her treatment, Munn underwent therapy that suppressed the hormones which enabled the cancer to grow but put her body into medically induced menopause.

The "Magic Mike" actress explained that the effects of the treatment left her weak and made it difficult to function.

"The hormone suppression therapy is brutal and it gave me next level debilitating exhaustion," Munn said. "I was just in bed all day long, all day long, and my quality of life was so minimal and I wasn’t able to be there for my baby." 

Munn told Strahan that she decided to take action after Malcolm noticed the change in her.

"Whenever Malcolm would come into the home he’d run straight to my bed because that's where he knows I am, like that’s what he associated with me," she recalled.

"And that was just too difficult for me to take," Munn said. "I had to find out if there was another option."

Munn said that she opted to get a hysterectomy and ovariectomy, marking her fifth surgery since receiving her diagnosis.

"Almost immediately after that, my energy just came back full force," she said.

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However, Munn and Mulaney were still hoping to expand their family so she decided to freeze her eggs ahead of getting the procedures.

"Right after the double mastectomy, I went through a round of egg retrieval," she said.

"That’s a scary process because I have a cancer that feeds off of hormones so I knew there was a risk and our doctor said, 'Look we’re gonna get one for you and then we’re gonna call it,' " she explained. "And then our doctor called and he said, 'Hey we got the results back. It’s two healthy embryos,' and I— I mean we just started bawling, crying, both of us."

"We really just hope that it works out for us to be able to have another baby," she added. "I just want one more. I'm not going to ask for too much more in this life, I promise. I just want one more baby."

Munn said that her doctor recommended that she start taking another medication soon that will suppress the production of hormones that could grow cancer in other parts of her body. 

The actress admitted that she questioned whether she was willing to undergo another treatment.

"I have been so aggressive," she said. "I did everything they told me to do. I did all the big surgeries. And now I'm saying, 'Do I have to do this extra drug?'"

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"It’s so tiring," Munn explained. "These drugs are so tiring, and I know I’m gonna stay aggressive. I know I’m going to do it. I’m just surprised that I’m even asking for anything less than aggressive because, I mean as you know, it just feels nonstop."

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"Because it is nonstop," she added.

Munn also shared what she had learned about herself and her priorities during her battle with cancer.

"I'm a lot braver than I thought I was," she said.

"And I learned that the most important thing to me in life is my family," Munn continued. "Everything else can go away, I don't have my career, I don't have my body the way that it looked before, but as long as the people that I love and care about are here and healthy and thriving nothing else matters."

Original article source: Olivia Munn documented cancer journey for son to show him 'I tried my best' if she 'didn't make it'

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